By Daniel Lukes
I remember the time humanity took a weekend that never ended. It was a Friday: people went home from work as usual, and then they just decided to not go back. They had plenty to do, kicking back watching TV, pottering about the house and garden, getting all those renovations finally done—and spring cleaning, lots of spring cleaning. The stores stopped selling food, but that was fine because they didn’t really need to eat anymore, and if truth be told, they needed to a lose a bit of weight anyway. The leaders all got together over a Zoom meeting, and they didn’t have much to say, just a general shrugging all round: they were stumped. President Dimbleby had grown a big white beard, and now looked a bit like Father Christmas: he sat there, beaming like a great idiot. Everyone just grinned and mumbled a few vague things.
Meanwhile the world returned to its old self: foxes in the cities, feral hogs gallivanting through the alleyways. A peacock was even seen prancing down an avenue, past windows that used to be fancy jewelry stores. People sat in their gardens and waited, the sun and clouds rolling across the sky like nothing much was the matter. The writers spoke up, and plenty folks decried this soporific state of affairs. “We can’t go on like this,” they argued. “Will you think of the economy.” “Yes, the economy,” thundered others. Gangs formed and gathered at the statehouses, guns in hand: a few bullets were put inside skulls. That’ll teach them to stop the world, they said. Get back to work, stop being so lazy and afraid. Party’s over: you can’t just have a weekend that never stops. Captains of industry banded together and said if people didn’t go back to the factories they’d just jolly well make them. It was around this time that the cacodemons came, like we knew they would.
The long weekend that never ended was the dress rehearsal, the arrival of the cacodemons was the main act. Glistening, soft, and transparent, like a slow liquid poured from the sky that coagulated into shimmering forms of dragons and other beasts we’d thought long obsolete. A vast unicorn snorting up bodies that floated high up into the sky, sucking them in like a vacuum cleaner. We felt light, the ascension no big deal really: as if we knew it was coming all along. Because they spoke in soft gentle voices, see, the cacodemons. They were friends from another world or another dimension, I forget which, and they were helping us find our real place in the order of things. Whole neighborhoods of people softly floating upwards into the ether, house by house, slithering out of doors, windows, whatever was easier. And most of us went that way, over the course of a couple weeks, just inhaled by something larger than us, which took off for cosmic parts unknown when it was full and sated. And those who stayed, well, here we are. Still at home for the weekend.
Daniel Lukes has a PhD in Comparative Literature, and his most recent book is Black Metal Rainbows (PM Press, 2023). His short stories have been published by Expat Press and Misery Tourism.
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